Friday, January 20, 2006

Manhattan, NY (OPENPRESS) January 20, 2006 -- About 2 weeks ago the customer service department at Lion Brand Yarn received an email message from a blind customer. The customers message said that they could not access the yarn and crochet patterns that the site offers their users. Something needed to be done.

Nancy Miracle, the Webmaster for the Lion Brand Web site needed more information on how to resolve this problem, so she reached out to a group of blind and visually impaired knitters. As a result of this collaboration the Lion Brand Web site now offers hundreds of knit and crochet patterns that are computable with "text to speech" Web browsers and devices that produce Braille from Web pages. The company now also gives detailed written description of the patterns and colors that appear in each of the yarns that they manufacture.

"According to the American Federation For the Blind, the minimum number of visually impaired computer users is about 1.5 million." said Ilana Rabinowitz, the director of consumer marketing for Lion Brand. "We know from user feedback that we have an active group of visually impaired customers who are passionate about yarn crafts and want access to our Web site to obtain knitting and crochet patterns. With the recent changes, these users now have complete access to 1,500 patterns."